17/11/2015

The GFT Data Practice in the UK, led by Nick Weisfeld and Jon Cooke have teamed up with our Business Development Lead, Julian Eyre to develop an innovative Blockchain proof-of-concept. We have assembled a team of experts to begin development over the coming days.

At GFT in the UK we hold a regular innovation competition which has proved very fruitful, judging by the number of concepts with potential business value that have come out of this process.

A ‘Data-focused’ competition held in the summer sourced ideas from all levels of consultants within the practice, resulting in two ideas that were of particular interest. Both focused on disrupting specific markets using the Blockchain technology.

At GFT we are very fortunate to have access to some key infrastructure that supports bottom up innovation including our own in-house innovation space “create@GFT”.

The Data Practice have focused their efforts on building a team that can deliver exceptional data solutions for clients, but also have the flexibility to think ‘outside the box’ about the next generation of industry and enterprise-wide disruptive technologies, and what they could mean for our clients and the sectors in which we operate.

Following the innovation competition, we held a follow-on ideas development workshop in October, including GFT staff and key industry experts to build out a proposition and business case for the most “current and relevant” Blockchain idea.

It was at this workshop that we formed the basis of a concept that we think may have some truly transformational qualities and which we would like to explore further by building out a proof-of-concept.

GFT’s UK Managing Directors have been very supportive of this approach and have allocated some venture capital funds to support this journey, and we are very pleased to report that development began on 12th November.

Gareth Richardson, Managing Director GFT UK said “It is great to see my team at GFT driving an agenda for industry disruption and innovation. This project is really exciting as we all believe that Blockchain has the potential to be a hugely significant idea for our industry. However, currently there is a lack of practical applications outside Bitcoin and it is great to see us leading the drive in this regard.”

We also plan to use this proof-of-concept to share our experiences with GFT’s network of consultants and clients. The team will be blogging about our experiences over the coming weeks, to keep everyone informed about both our successes and the challenges we face. We would also like to share our experiences of the pitfalls of investing in the technology and specifically what you should consider when embarking on a Blockchain project. This will be of particular interest if you are considering investing in the technology, or if you simply want to learn more about the concepts and applications that we might see over the next decade. We look forward to sharing our experiences and progress over the coming weeks, as we begin the first of a series of sprints to evolve the concept.

The technology landscape is evolving fast and GFT intends to be a leader in this space, whether this may be in Consensus Computing, Distributed Ledger or Blockchain.
Nick WeisfeldCo-Head of Data PracticeGFT UK